Studying abroad

It’s been two months that I have been studying at the University of Birmingham in the UK now. It’s something that I have been wanting to do for a long time, ever since I can remember actually. I have always had a passion for English and have always wanted to live in an Anglophone country. I had had the chance to do two-months internship in Miami but it was more a working experience than a studying one.

I am currently studying here through the Erasmus programme, meaning that I am still registered at my home university in Grenoble but I am sent here without any tuition fee to pay. You are accepted (or not) depending on your previous years marks and the Uni you are applying too of course.

When I looked at the list of the Universities that have a partnership with my home University, I wanted to find one that was a good University, that was going to give me a real learning outcome and a real life experience of studying abroad. But, not gonna lie, I was also looking for one that was on my boyfriend’s list (because he was doing a year abroad as well). When I saw the University of Birmingham and started doing my research on it, I totally fell in love. The courses sounded amazing, the campus is gorgeous, the city was so great that I knew I would be doing my utter best to be accepted. I knew that around 200 students from my University wanted to go study abroad for their third year and that my home university had a restricted number of people that could go to the UoB because it was a good one. I finally got accepted by my university along with two girls from my class and danced around for an hour in my pajamas. My boyfriend had been accepted by his University a month before that. After that came the application to the UoB itself and after that, months of waiting for their answer. Of course, because of my bad luck, I received my answer 2 months after everyone. I was over the moon. Everything that I had wanted (studying abroad, in an English-speaking country, with my boyfriend, and two of my friends) had come true. I was thrilled.

After that went the real planning: finding an apartment with my boyfriend, doing all the registering stuff, the paperwork, working the entire summer, and the overwhelming anxiety. I spent nights not being able to sleep because I was so nervous. Am I going to succeed? It is my final year as an undergraduate, will I pass? How are we going to find an apartment from afar? Will I manage financially?

Now, two months after our arrival, I am so happy I did it. I am in love with England, with Birmingham, with hearing English every day, with studying here, with ordering a coffee and being asked â€œhiya, how are you doing? Hope to see you soon have a good day!â€ or â€œare you okay sweetheart? would you like anything else?” I am a people-lover (nice people-lover of course) and having someone ask me every day how I am makes my heart smile. How could I not love it here? The teachers are amazing and are really wanting you to succeed, to know what you think and how you came to think that, to bring the best to your studies. People are so polite, so nice and so upbeat (of course this is generally speaking). Even if finding an apartment was a real struggle and getting settled was quite hard, I don’t regret making all of this efforts and going through a rough time because I think the result is really good. I am very lucky to be able to study abroad. Every day, whatever mood I am in, I always walk to campus taking in the brisk air of England, enjoying the luck that I have to be here.

More articles will come your way soon, I couldn’t find the time to post before as everything needed to get sorted,